


A Six Letter Word

by TheLannisterBastard



Category: Helix
Genre: Angst, Gen, cancer really sucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 17:13:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1355293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLannisterBastard/pseuds/TheLannisterBastard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She'd been dealing with death calmly for years, why should her own be any different?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Six Letter Word

**Author's Note:**

> Quick little thing because I made myself sad thinking of how Sarah would have dealt with being told she has cancer. 
> 
>  
> 
> And her cat is totally named after Rosalind Franklin, the woman that discovered the double helix. I thought it was fitting.

 

When they told her she was dying she didn’t have any words. Not that she was an overly talkative person to begin with, but hearing the word cancer had turned her into a functional mute. But while she was silent on the outside her insides were a storm of emotions. One second it was fear gnawing at her stomach, the next it was sorrow sticking in her throat. But mostly there was bubbling rage. She couldn’t be dying, not from something as mundane as cancer. And certainly not this young. She was barely a month shy of turning twenty-six and had celebrated her second year at the CDC just last week, she couldn’t be dying. But she was, and rather quickly at that.

 

As she sat in the sterile white room they told her there might be a chance to get the cancer out with surgery, but she wasn't optimistic. It was in her neck, close to the brain stem. Even with being in shock from the news she knew the odds, saying her chances were slim was giving the oncologists too much credit. But even as they discussed treatment options she found herself zoning out, it wasn't like it was any new information anyway. They were giving her two years at most, and that was with immediate and aggressive treatment. She was going to do all she could to fight it but she wasn't going to kid herself either. 

 

She made it all the way back to her little apartment before breaking down. But as she unlocked the door she heard the plaintive meows of her cat, Rosalind. That was when she started crying. Rose rammed her head against Sarah's legs, completely oblivious to the fact that anything was wrong. Rose had been the first thing Sarah had acquired after moving to Atlanta. Directly after signing her lease she had gone down to the shelter to pick a cat out. She had been intending on getting a kitten, a new start for her new career, but she'd found Rose instead. She'd been the saddest of the bunch what with her left eye missing and the bald spot from where she had been caught in a house fire. The shelter workers had warned her about Rose's bad temper, but when she had approached the cage she had just started purring. It had never really been a question what cat she was bringing home. And now she had to figure out what to do with Rose when she... No, she wasn't going to think about that, not now. 

 

She slept horribly that night. It seemed like she was up every hour, and that was once she had gotten to sleep in the first place. She would wake with a start, her heart racing and thudding in her ears. Every time she so much as closed her eyes she would slip into a nightmare. It was always the same, a pair of invisible hands strangling her, letting her breathe just enough that she didn't die, but enough to make her wake up in tears. After what seemed like the hundredth time she just gave up and went into the kitchen to start her morning pot of coffee. 

 

As she got ready for work she looked at herself in the mirror expecting to see  _something_  different. Maybe some more bags under her eyes or at the very least some dark circles, maybe even some lines on her face. Nothing was there, though. She looked exactly like she had yesterday, which was exactly what she had looked like six months ago. But in a year, maybe a little more if she was lucky, she would be a corpse, and in two years she'd be nothing but a pile of bones in a pine box. It wasn't right. It wasn't  _fair_. She wanted to make a difference in the world _damnit,_  and some stupid disease was going to ruin that. All those years of schooling, all the years of stress, panic, and maybe a little too much coffee, all for nothing. She was going to die and any hope she had of changing the world was gone. 

 

Really all death was was just the end of all vital functions, clean and precise. Yes, it was always sad, sometimes even tragic, but it was inevitable. Death wasn't something people could just skip out on, some just had to face that reality sooner than others. And her sooner than most. 


End file.
